I just received my usb wireless modem from Cricket. I had used Verizon's in the past. I will tell you right now I am very disappointed. I will try it from a few different locations this week. From my home I am getting three bars on my mac and Vista machine. I am seeing pings of over 800ms. On a new server of WOW, I was in the red, even though the server was low volume. My max transmit rate is 21.1 kbps, my receive rate is 105 kbps. The MTU was not returning a value for me. It takes 72 seconds to return Yahoo mail. Facebook is over a minute. It seems slower to me than my dial up modem.
I was hoping it would become a decent replacement for DSL, but at least where in Colorado Springs it appears to be lacking. Here are some screen shots of trace routes.
For those who are not familiar asterisks are bad. LOL
It appears that level3 is where Cricket gets its bandwidth from. I will try it in a few days just in case it is a one day occurrence.
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21 comments:
I am in Portland, Oregon. Cricket Broadband Wireless started off really good for the first 5 months (May 2008 to October). Up to 1.1 mbps download bandwidth.
The last 5 days have been truly miserable. Connection strength is still 100% but bandwidth has never been anywhere near 'broadband'.
I've been online at all times of the day and night - even at 3 AM, after a cold reboot, the bandwidth varies between dial-up (56k) and 100 kbps.
The result is frequent web page request time-outs needing a 'refresh' or try-again. Also, I've noticed that the connection status will very quickly (sub 15 seconds) go to 'dormant' if there is no activity, resulting in the next web page request invariably failing.
youTube and Google videos are impossible to watch.
Cricket technical support number is impossible to find on their web site. Customer Service (lol what a joke) sucks big time.
Since May 2008 I have had 511 sessions and total data transfer is 1.8 GB, no where near the 5 GB per month limit. I am using Windows XP and I'm a software engineer and would know if my laptop was compromised in any way with for example a virus.
CONCLUSION : Cricket Broadband Wireless Service is a fraudulent con. Save your money and use pen, paper and snail mail.
Best to all - HoustonB
Horrible, horrible, horrible. Cricket broadband might as well be the old fidonet xmodem (not even zmodem)
And I'm stuck with their rotten modem for two hundred bucks since I lost the mail-in, even after I have the satisfaction of canceling their rotten service. (I hate rebates, too - just drop the friggin' price, willya)
A simple low-graphics page is taking over a minute and some graphics don't show up at all. And just forget YouTube, even low quality. YT plays for two seconds then buffers for ten or more, repeat infinitely. Maddening. I HATE CRICKET BROADBAND. THEY SUCK. ROBBERS, LIARS, AND THIEVES. Maybe the guys at those corrupt investment banks that wrecked the economy and are soaking up my tax dollars also own Cricket. Wouldn't surprise me. That or the Mafia. Or Satan has stock in the company. They sure know how to lie and run a scam.
I'm in Beaverton Oregon and I've experienced the exact same issues. I get a pretty good ping at www.speedtest.net bug in WoW I'm in the red and downloading between 10 and 150kbps. Once I get my credit cleaned up I'm switching.
One thing that does help. Call Cricket tech support and tell them to refresh your hardware. Make sure your computer is off when they do this. After words, turn the system back on and click on Tools | Activation in your Quicklink Mobile window. It will fix the problem for about a day. Do this every day until you switch or they fix the problem.
Also, it seems the cause of the problem is there are too many cricket users in this area. After 11pm the problem solves itself and it isn't so painful to download a page.
you get what you pay for. cricket is affordable some what fast internet. its for on the go people such as business people and college students. obviously its not made for gaming, what did you expect? it is after all only 35$ a month. does what it says. i did however notice its sluggish during the day. of course there are other users online who dont get offline until nighttime. idk ... i like it. faster than internet sharing with my tmodash.
What do you guys expect for 40.00 a month?????
I pay 50.00 a month for verizon and it isn't always perfect.
DO NOT GET CRICKET!
I wanted a less expensive broadband option than Comcast so I tried Cricket. The Internet service was extremely slow (slower than I remember dial-up being).
So I wanted to cancel. I looked around their website for 20-odd minutes and made several calls in order to cancel. NOTHING. Gee, is their website/phone number designed to NOT facilitate cancellation???
Finally I got into the signup area (after a hold of about 5 minutes). By then I was so pissed I was quite rude to the girl on the phone. She canceled my service.
Now I have a $35 return fee and the $25 signup fee is gone. Next they will examine the returned modem for "damage". The back is a little scratched (probably designed to scratch easily), so I bet they will screw me on that.
WHAT AN AHOLE OF A COMPANY!
Slowest, rottenest internet ever, but I'm in a limited area and stuck with it. Worse than dialup. Modem cost a fortune and their rotten, cheap little phone was way overpriced. Customer service is NONEXISTENT. I tried getting them on the phone for Four Days and never got a connection. It's all overseas assistance of course. They take our money but don't hire Americans.
I'm using Sprint's Mobile Broadband service @ $50 a month for 5GB of data. Sprint has the largest mobile broadband network. Sprint and Verizon both offer EV-DO Rev A, so data transfer is fast, not cable fast, but a million times better than slow dial-up. I've also used Cricket, while "no-contract" is nice, that doesn't make up for subpar speeds.
Consider switching to either Verizon or Sprint, I've used both, and both are great services!
Cricket is fine for what it is intended for. It is a replacement for dialup NOT DSL or CABLE. Get serious, and do some research and reading. I have it in the mid-atlantic and it seems to have actually gotten better.
have you checked the prices guys.. i guess you get what you pay for.. if you want to get better connect than what you can get from cricket dont be cheap.. pay $59.99 then if you get over 5GB pay more.. $0.05/MB. wow.. hahaha.
The mac connection app is buggy and crashes all the time.
The broadband service disconnects on a regular basis.
Forget about using this when you travel, their coverage is very limited.
Speeds fluctuate between poor and abysmal
Wish I could get my money back....
I got rid of them but took a big loss on their modem. I don't expect cable speeds, or even cell phone speeds, but youtube vids are pretty low bandwidth. They should at least be watchable, which they are not. I might as well try to watch Youtube on dialup.
Watching YouTube on Cricket is more painful than getting your teeth drilled ;')
I had cricket broadband wireless and I hated it. Starting from the installation process, the reliability issue, and horrible customer service and inaccurate billing. I called many times and gave them bad reviews. I would not recommend Cricket at all. The company is not stable and the product is bad, and the customer reps were rude and obtuse.
I paid over $60 for my service. So for that much I expect RELIABLE service. Someone is right that it was very difficult to get in touch with their customer service. I used it for 2 months and canceled it. But they kept sending me bills. When I disconnected my wireless service, they gave me a credit for canceling PHONE service. They added reinstatement fees and paper bill fee! what an idiot!
I am so FED UP with them that I plan to write my complaint in every review sites out there!
One reason their customer service is so bad is they farm it out to the Philippines. Good old outsourcing. Hey, take our money and use our freedoms, government services, infrastructure, tax breaks, and corporate welfare, but why keep jobs here in the USA?
Love my cricket wireless service ;)
Was able to get fair BW (90-120K sec) from the very early morning hours ( 2-3 am), and into the day until about 4-5 pm. Then streaming video of any kind was out of tthe question. Now after 5 months, yep I have heard that before, after five months, I am getting less than dialup, (approx. 5-15Ks sec). They promise you 900K+ for 40$ a month, and then DO NOT DELIVER IT. I am in DOWNTOWN TULSA right underneath tower support for gosh sakes. Cricket sucks. Go with one of the guys who can play in the big leagues. ANY of them will be better than cricket....
Someone here said you get what you pay for but that's not true. I had taken the 2.5gb like last year and expected to be able to go on the web and watch videos on link sent by friends via e-mails, but they are so slow that the viewing is impossible. I am very disappointed with this service this year. I read their new policy on equitable usage, but most people use very little bandwith and therefore it shouldn't be a problem even if some customers use a lot of bandwith. Viewing a video or a movie needs speed and if we can't get speed with Cricket, then why bother. I have switched to a faster downloading plan and will gice it a shot but I'm not holding my breath.
I agree Cricket broadband is terrible. I did a speed test on my service which was 0.02 for upload and 0.04 for download. Dial up was faster. Someone informed me that the service is so slow because cricket only pays for service for every 3rd tower which might explain the horrible service. Please do not waste your money with cricket.
I would NEVER have cricket again! They are super slow and it took me an hour to download a 5k document. When I cancelled the account they still took money out of my account and 31 days later I still do not have my refund. I would tell anyone to use another company for internet or phone service. I now have straight talk for my service and have never had problems with service. I have AT&T for my internet. There are other prepaid internet companies as well and I would use them before I would ever go back to Cricket!
I switched from Cricket broadband to a company called "Clear" and the service is excellent I strongly recommended it. If your broadband bills due on the 1st of the month Cricket shuts it off on the 30th and you have to call them for an explanation and someone will explain why if you can get to someone.
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